EFFECTS OF MATERNAL VITAMIN D3 LEVELS DURING PREGNANCY ON PORK QUALITY CHARACTERISTICS OF OFFSPRING PIGS

Introduction. Maternal vitamin D3 levels have long lasting consequences on meat quality and growth performance. The present study was conducted to investigate maternal vitamin D3 status in sows during pregnancy on meat quality attributes, chemical composition, and low field nuclear magnetic resonance (LF-NMR) T2 relaxation times of longissimus dorsi muscle in offspring pigs. Materials and methods. A total of 27 sows (41st day of pregnancy) were randomly allotted to low (LD), normal (ND), and high (HD) dietary vitamin D3 groups (containing 200, 800 and 3200 IU of vitamin D3/kg experimental diet, respectively). In each group were 3 replicates with 3 sows per replicate. From parturition to weaning, all lactating sows fed the ND diet. At 150 days of age, six offspring pigs in each group (2 offspring pigs with similar body weight per replicate, gender balanced) were selected and slaughtered to evaluate pork quality characteristics. Results and discussion. The results showed that maternal vitamin D3 supplementation decreased L*, b* value, shear force, cooking loss, T21 and T22 relaxation times, while increased a* value, pH value, water holding capacity (WHC), crude protein (CP), crude fat (CF), calcium (Ca), and phosphorus (P) content in longissimus dorsi muscle of offspring pigs. These results demonstrated that high-dose maternal vitamin D3 level could improve meat quality characteristics of offspring pigs, and it will provide a scienfific basis for the early nutritional regulation of offspring prok quality. Conclusions. The findings indicated that maternal vitamin D3 supplementation has positive effects on quality characteristics of longissimus dorsi muscle, and improved eating quality of meat in offspring pigs.